Where Miss Snark vented her wrath on the hapless world of writers and crushed them to sand beneath her T.Rexual heels of stiletto snark. The blog is dark--no further updates after 5/20/2007.

12.16.2006

HH Com 91

Happy Birthday, Mr. President

The American Union is in full decline as it moves from a crocap service economy to a more profitable madcap system. Stalwart ad agency and propaganda mill MurQor Engineering maintains high standards of cronyism under outgoing president Ron Bipotus.

Despite his impeccable upbringing, Ron’s son Barry is a self-doubting anomic. His many siblings, from multiple marriages, are successful, career-hopping rainmakers of madcap entrepreneurial bilking. Barry’s attitude relegates him to the presidency of MurQor—the onerous long-term appointment is gifted him on his twenty-fifth birthday.

Barry disappoints his father on day one by entering the building through the nearest service door instead of the executive foyer. There he meets beautiful Elena Mendez, a brilliant, fast-tracked young professional who helps design strategic marketing campaigns for such key products as wars and psychiatric drugs.

Spiritual and kindhearted, Elena outclasses her clamoring proletarian peers. Barry immediately decides he will sleep with her. His outlook on life improves epiphanously; his initial job performance is outstanding.

Elena’s terminal cancer, a commonplace of the poisoned biosphere, provides good reason for refusing his advances. Barry casually transfers millions of ameros and a commensurate social status to her RFID chip. Although he claims to have arranged for her rapid and painless cure, Elena discovers that he has afforded her only a remission.

While his frat-brat lecherousness tilts toward true love, Elena manipulates Barry’s conscience and other character flaws to her own ends. Soon he has made MurQor into a madcap shop with disastrous consequences for the AU.

ello: supposed to be social satire set in a dystopic near future. crocap = crony capitalism. POTUS = president of the US = George Bush 1 & 2. Reading this back, the humor is way too cleverish and droll. And it's basically just a synopsis of chapters 1-4. My writing style, to use the term loosely, seems to allow either contrived humor or boring melancholia. Sorry to annoy and confuse, didn't mean to!

Huh? I missed most of the humor because I was too busy being baffled by the vocabulary. (What's a rainmaker got to do with businesses? Sounds like a tribal weatherman.) Finally clued into the funny stuff near the bottom, but my head hurts from trying to deciper this stuff.

crocap = crony capitalism

Is this something you made up, or a term that's actually used in certain (not mine) circles?

Aww thanks hawkowl. If it were done I'd certainly give it to you. I have 30,000 words that would probably be about as mind-bending as this if you tried to slog through it. Well, the dialog makes sense I suppose and it's not so condensed as this, so maybe it's not total garbage. Thanks for being more enthusiastic than me, though, I'll be more likely to work on it! What's an ARC list? I just found this blog a few weeks ago.

Definitely not a nitwit, sonar. The unforeseen need to decipher kinda defeats the purpose of trying to get someone interested, come to think of it, which would make me the nitwit. I prefer half-wit though.

Crocap is made up, like Orwell made up Ingsoc; but I'm no Orwell. Rainmaker I didn't make up: it's an entrepreneur who makes deals happen, mostly by connections rather than competence. Based on the tribal weatherman sense of course. Idea inspired by the careers of George W. and his sibs.

Sorry again, you're not supposed to need a glossary for these. Alls I'm sayin is that I was not being INTENTIONALLY absurd or opaque.

An ARC is an Advanced Reading Copy. It's a bound copy of the book that's still subject to changes. Usually it's sent to people who might blurb it, libraries, purchasers, anybody that you want to see the book in advance to pay the way for your massive sales. But you can also give some of them to your dear friends and faithful fans, so they get to read it before anybody else.

Internet. Is. Amazing. On Amazon.com, someone's posted a picture of the back of a 1950 copy of 1984. (It was published in 1949.) Guess what? 'Ingsoc' isn't mentioned anywhere on there. Instead, it lists four different social classes in 1984's world, and asks the reader which one they would fit into. The last line talks about "...forbidden love and terror in a world many of us may live to see!"

You sound like you've figured this out, now, but people like me are much more forgiving of new vocab within a story than we are on the blurb. Yay, Miss Snark, for seeing past it!

Another interesting tidbit - I (belatedly) Googled 'rainmaker', and this is what I found:

# executive who is very successful in bringing in business to his company or firm# American Indian medicine man who attempt to make it rain

I'm not a writer by trade. Don't think there will be bound copies but I'll probably post it online.

Thanks all, I get that it's confusing, awkward, show-offish, and silly. Glad some enjoyed, but it's probably more like seeing a political cartoon you agree with than hooking on a story. Amok capitalism comes through, but overwrought language can't hide flat characters and dull events.